Material Value Conservation: Development of Design Criteria for Rigid Plastic Packaging

Abstract

Inappropriate plastic packaging design with excessive use of color and printing ink affected to the high cost of sorting, separation and cleaning, and low acceptance level of plastic waste for secondary recycling. This research proposed design for material value conservation which elaborated with a set of design criteria for rigid plastic packaging production as key solution in avoiding value degradation of the plastic waste. The existing design criteria of products have various approach which affected on how to manage abundant plastic waste with no or very low value of materials that has been generated by daily consumption of plastic packaging. Otherwise, the proposed design criteria conserve the material value systematically which make the post use materials of plastic packaging more financially feasible as raw materials in plastic recycling industry. Widespread implementation of the new design criteria in industry will generate broader impact and more benefits in economic, social and environment, especially for countries or regions with high density of people and high consumption rate of conserved products.